It's Davies.
That stupid bastard,
He just won't die.
He just lies
On the side of this hill
And he cries.
Cries for his Momma.

They sent me peach-fuzz,
Girls with rose-petal lips.
When what I needed was shits
From the London streets;
Street-wise, ugly snouts
And they sent me choir-boys
With mealy-mouths.

Some huge black bastard
Caught me on the hop,
And after all these years?
This is where I stop,
And I can't fucking
Go in peace
Cause he just won't die.

"SHUT UP, DAVIES!!!
I scream,
And he cries
"Sarge," he cries,"Sarge...
It hurts...It hurts..."

So I call out to him:
"Close your eyes,boy,
Go to sleep,
Think of your girl's teat..."
"I can't Sarge, I can't
It's still light..."

Well let me tell you,
Whoever spoke
About the gloom
And silence of the tomb
Hanging over
Battlefield grounds
Was some fucking poet
Who never heard the sounds
Of the sucking of air
Into punctured lungs
And the groans
And moans of bloody
Clarence Davies-Jones,
Who won't fucking die
And leave me alone,
To take my own
Journey home.

“Do you think you know what love is, Clara? Because I don’t. Even to this day, I cannot explain, why for that one moment when you are suspended - and are entirely there and completely sane – that one moment just before…Did you know that it feels exactly the same? So you cannot tell if your heart is about to be broken or healed of all its pain.”

Thursday, 26 June 2014

Run, Little God,
On your sharp hooves
Little God of Wood and Bower,
Little God of the Three Horns,
Run with us.

We scatter
Silken linens,
Palace-soft feet
Sting to the crackle
Of breaking twigs
And tearing skin,
Our mouths sweet
With the red blood
Of men and grapes,
Free and wild we run
So come with us,
Little God,
Be not afraid.

Frantic clouds
Race moon-darkling
Shadows in the wild
Before us wavering
Through the slender
Saplings runs tender
Palest flesh
Panting breath,
Enticement lures us
Feeds and breeds
Desires in us.

Run, Little God,
Tomorrow we return,
Mouths bruised;
To spindle and cradle,
To mind the fires,
And weave and ladle
Gruel to our masters,
But this night
We run, and hunt
The heated dark;

Tuesday, 24 June 2014

I will tell you what it is to me: evil is the base spirit acting unwitnessed: unwitnessed by its own conscience, by society and by God.

Our work as sentient beings is to witness. It is what defines sentience, is it not? The ability not just to see, but to WITNESS. What held societies to the straight and narrow for thousands of years was the belief in a witnessing all -seeing God. Just the belief in the existence of an all-seeing eye, more than any divine retribution. An eye that could see us, make us SEE ourselves as we are, and Mankind fears and loves nothing quite as much as a mirror.

What we fashionably consider a reversal to the basest primitive brutality is in fact the newest development in human social evolution: individuality. Not so long ago, to think or act as an individual - contrary to the benefit of the community - was the fastest way to die, to extinguish your genetic line. Only in the last hundred years has individuality become a survival trait.

We moved from the small individual groups that guaranteed the best odds on survival to the urban social structure where individuality is at a premium. The Industrial Revolution birthed the individuality of modern man, and brought about the demise of the family/tribe. We are in the midst of the ME generation, a society suddenly freed of "witnesses".

People are born and raised raised in crowds, our mobility means we can cross the world and restart our lives in the midst of strangers. We can take on new faces, new histories. We are unwitnessed as human beings, and so stripped of responsibility. We divest ourselves of history. We strip ourselves of conscience. We are not witnessed, and we bear no witness.

And so modern man is anonymous.
Anonymous people can practise any act, do any evil. They move invisibly in the world, believing all eyes are blind and so they are not accountable for invisible acts. Moving in the moral dark, they believe themselves unwitnessed, but there is one witness no-one can blind: themselves.

There has never been in the entire history of mankind an era like the last hundred years. Dickens knew. He called it "The best of times, the worse of times"

Charles Dickens was the witness to the rise of the modern era in all its sordid glory: urban squalor, misery, poverty as humanity had never known before; and the ultimate evil: indifference. He denounced it again and again. The hypocrisy, the cruelty, and above all, the indifference.

Tell me, what is indifference but a refusal to witness?
Unwitnessed acts demand no action, no redress, isn't that so?
So there is a new social contract: close your eyes to my evil, I will close my eyes to yours.
We are faced with a social structure that does NOT work, with a reproductive strategy that is proving

disastrous, and yet, in the very midst of this potential disaster is our greatest hope.

Even as the old contract is voided, still some luminous souls are stepping up, taking responsibility, giving love, gifting us with hope, witnessing. We Humans are at our very best when the night is darkest, so we light candles of laughter and love and poetry, and in that fitful flickering we WITNESS random acts of love and kindness.

Here is how we fight the banal, insidious evil: we see, we witness; and not just the act, we must see the actors. There must be no invisible people in our worlds.

There are other kinds of evil that revel in witnesses, but that is something else, and God be thanked, much less common.

So don't tell me there is nothing you can do to change the world, because you see, you don't have to DO anything. All you have to do is open your eyes, see the people around you, bear witness to their lives. Love them, and let them love you. Step out of the dark. Turn on the light.

Thursday, 19 June 2014

Red-hot narcissistic compulsively healthy-living control freak - Lance Packhard - who happens to be a bankrupt sex-therapist (writing a book called “Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate”) gets hired to seduce a woman who just loves food, Millie Deafly.

She’s not interested in men, let alone someone like our hero. The only way he'd get her attention was if he dabbed garlic-oil on his nipples? And even that would just not work! (he shaves his chest, she likes them hairy)

So in order to get close to her, he gets himself hired as an assistant to the Chef at Guilty Pleasures - a dinner club belonging to our heroine - and her business partner, Serge Moreno.

Now Serge used to be a prostitute in Istanbul, a fluffer in skin-flicks in Vegas and is now a Master Chef in London. He’s also a homosexual black dwarf with major personality/sensitivity issues. Politcal correctness is not his thing...

Every night a new set of crazy guests come to the Guilty Pleasures to pig out, and poor abstemious Lance (as his alter-ego, a geeky but sexy Will) finds himself sucked into a riotous world of eccentricity and sensuality quite unlike anything he’s ever experienced.

He suddenly finds himself falling madly in love with his “subject”… and about to be outed as an impostor!

If you want to know how it ends, read the book! (It’s really funny. And sexy. Oh, and delicious!)

God! I gained POUNDS!
Ok, I ate pounds...Of chocolate...Ok, other things too.
I cooked all the menus in the book?
Research, of course. I HAD to do it.
I did.
Imagine I got something wrong?
Research is VERY important to our credibility as writers.
I did lots of research. Lots. And lots...
Lets not go there...

Back to the book: every chapter opens with “advice” from Lance’s how-not-to book “Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate”, and closes with excerpts from Millie’s tell-all diary.

Friday, 13 June 2014

Warning: Do not read this book when hungry. I had to stop reading several times to feed my growling stomach after reading the descriptions of the delicacies held within the pages of Guilty Pleasures. Now, with your tummy full, proceed to the tale of love in a fanciful food nirvana.

Lance is a celibate sex therapist in financial crisis. Millie is a curvy food lover who runs an exclusive club that caters to the ultimate food desires of her clients. From seemingly simple hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizzas to the overly extravagant Quail in Port with Plum sauce on a bed of Asparagus, all dishes are served from the kitchen of Guilty Pleasures.

Lance is hired by Millie's mum to seduced Millie and eventually get her pregnant. He is weary from the start, but takes the initial deposit with plans to pay it back and end the job as soon as his book advance comes in. What Lance doesn't expect is to fall hard and fast for the vivacious creature that is Millicent Deafly.

Almost every chapter is told in three parts. First, an excerpt from the book Lance is writing, Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate, then, a third person narrative, and closes with a diary entry from Millie. I love that we are essentially getting three points of view, but it didn't seem at all confusing or take away from the story. Lance's excerpts are very informative and often humorous. Millie's diary entries are a salacious treat, her personality really shines in her short, yet poignant, entries.

As for the heat from these two, it is a slow delicious burn well worth waiting for. I continued to wait for the proverbial shoe to drop and when it did, the unexpected happened. Not to give anything away, but Cardiga gives us several twists and turns in one of the most innovative settings I've read to date.

Sunday, 8 June 2014

The very first page of Guilty Pleasures saw me laughing out loud. By the last page I was close to tears. In between was a beautiful, engaging, colourful, delicious, funny, enthralling, gut-wrenching, erotic and heart-warming ride. The characters were multi-dimensional, the plot unique, and the storytelling an absolute delight. Thank you Manuela Cardiga for this fabulous story!

It sounds sooo deliciously delightfully GUILT inducing!
Especially what you may do under the influence…
“I did not WANT to do it…I was TIED TO THE BED and…”

So let’s have one, or two…or three!
And how about some music?

I like cooking to music, gets me in the mood. How about some Cuban rhythms to match that hot spicy food and silky rum?

Now that we are in the right mood for this adventure, let’s do get it on!

EXOTIC GROUPER ON A HOT BED

Grouper Fillets - or any firm-fleshed fish. (Take it from me, girls, always check the firmness of the flesh, it’s very important on a hot bed.)

Hopefully you will have recruited a suitably firm-fleshed kitchen-helper to do all the slicing and dicing and the icky stuff, while you sensuously pose, dose and stir.

Don’t forget! RED LIPSTICK and something low-cut. Or just some black stockings and a frilly apron. Whatever you are comfortable not wearing.

MARINADE
1 Glass of Rum
Juice of 3 Key Limes
3 Green Chilies (as hot as you can take it Ladies, and I like it HOT)
Good handful of fresh Mint
Good handful of fresh Coriander
2 large Garlic Cloves
Sea Salt

Now we can go…
First let’s get our fish into the MARINADE!
Take all the MARINADE ingredients and put them in a blender. WHIZZZ away!
Now set the fish out in a recipient and pour that goop over it.

We will now ignore it for at least an hour.
Let’s have another drink and do some exotic dancing.
Move those hips, jiggle those tits!
OOPS!!Wait a bit!
I was forgetting!
We better get that HOT BED ready!

The HOT BED…
Take the Onion, the Green Pepper and the Mango and get your Helper to slice and dice as per instructions…

For this part of the preparation I recommend a Tango for the Mango...

Get him to do that dicing dramatically, provocatively, like an Argentinean outlaw. Sashay around him as he slices, undo his shirt buttons while licking your lips. Slide a leg sensuously around him, throw back your head and slide a chunk of mango down between your heaving bosoms.Get him to lick off the juice…

Arrange the Mango, the Red-Onion slices and the cubed Green Pepper on the bottom of an Oven-proof dish. Sprinkle the hot curry powder over it.

Take your helper to the bed-room and show him the bed.
(set a timer, don’t forget about the poor fish in its Marinade!)

TRRRIIIIIING!!!!!

COME ON! Get out of that bed!
Pre-heat your oven! 200ºC or there abouts and let’s that get that fish laid out onto that succulent spicy bed…

Carefully arrange the fillets on top of the aforementioned bed and pour the marinade over it.

Now we do the KINKY COVER
Heat up the olive oil in a skillet and throw in the Bacon.
When the bacon starts to crisp, add the cashew.
Stir it around for a few minutes, then spoon the Bacon/Cashew mix over that shamelessly naked fish…

Pop it into the oven for around 45 minutes.

While you wait, you can do the GREEN SALAD.
Just tear up the lettuce, and the mint and but be very gentle with the cucumber.
That’s it.

When the fish is done, serve it HOT with the Green Salad and a fresh jug of TIE ME TO THE BED.
Then go back for seconds.
Or thirds…